Published July 1st.
Presidential historian Allan Lichtman took aim at CNN’s News Central hosts Monday morning for being “complicit” in Donald Trump’s political rise amid the presumptive Republican nominee’s bid for a second term.
Lichtman, appearing with hosts John Berman and Sara Sidner, shifted gears during his comments about recent polls between Trump and Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.
He believes Trump’s remarks during last week’s debate should have grabbed more headlines than Biden’s much-discussed struggles.
“I love you guys in the media, but I have to say, you are complicit in Donald Trump lying and conning his way to the presidency. All of the attention has been on Biden’s faltering debate, but Donald Trump’s debate was vastly worse,” Lichtman said. "It was based entirely on lies. More than 30 significant lies.
“He threatened our democracy by saying he wouldn’t accept the results of a fair election. That he would seek retribution. Why wasn’t that the headlines? Why wasn’t that the greatest concern from the debate, rather than all of the focus on Joe Biden.”
In his rebuke of the media’s coverage of Trump, he continued:
“There’s an old saying, it’s not just the evil people who wreak havoc on the world, it’s the good people who don’t do enough to stop them. And the media right now is complicit in Donald Trump gaslighting his way to the presidency and threatening our democracy,” Lichtman added.
I feel so fucking vindicated right now that a presidential historian is saying the same exact thing I’ve been saying. Trump’s “performance” was horrifying and nobody said a word. Its infuriating.
You must only care about the horse race aspect of the election then.
There are people who don’t see “beat the other guy no matter what” as the aim of our great political project.
The aim of our great political project is “Lets work together to create a world worth living in, a world of broadly shared prosperity, a world with the infrastructure that is the envy of the world, a world where housing is a human right, and so are healthcare (including in the rural areas), retirement, food, education and transportation. Let’s work together to explore space and to discover new science. A world that’s unpolluted. A world where being poor is not a slow motion death sentence. A world where everyone is in a position to build some savings instead of living paycheck to paycheck. A world of internet connectivity as a human right, including in the most rural area. A world of net neutrality. A world of limited copyrights and limited patents. A world void of monopolies as a matter of principle. A world of personal bodily autonomy. A world where privacy is protected for most people but where the superrich have transparency requirements because they can greatly affect our wellbeing with a stroke of a pen. A world with a wealth ceiling and no billionaires.”
No shit dude. You need to focus on the present first, though, so that we can continue to work towards that future you speak of. Because right now, the authoritarians threatening to make that future inaccessible are more relevant.
One option, and that’s a possibility.
The other, and that possibility disappears.
The fact that you don’t recognize that is, to me,a huge problem for the upcoming election.
What? Take out Biden completely. Remove his parts from the debate. Every single one of Trump’s non-answers were antidemocratic. He was racist, what are "black jobs’, Mr Trump? He was disconnected, talking about murder and rape crisis that dont exist. He was unhinged, and sounded like he lived in a different universe. There was nothing constructive or attractive about his remarks. You can’t build America with them. None of those ideals belong in a egalitarian democracy.
The aim of our great political project is "Lets work together to create a world worth living in,
That’s all fine and dandy in theory when assuming good faith from all parts of the project.
In reality, though, one of the two major US parties is literally a fascist party now. By definition, fascists don’t argue or negotiate in good faith. Furthermore, their goals are so horrid that compromising towards them at all is inevitably a worse concession than reasonably acceptable.
A lot of the reason why it got this far and continues to get even worse is the Dem party insisting that “bipartisanship” is the highest political virtue of all. No matter what you’re giving up.
a world of broadly shared prosperity, a world with the infrastructure that is the envy of the world, a world where housing is a human right, and so are healthcare (including in the rural areas), retirement, food, education and transportation
That the Dems almost always fail to move society in that direction is in large part BECAUSE they insist on cooperation with people who are pathologically opposed to honest good faith cooperatiLet’s work together to explore space and to discover new science. A world that’s unpolluted. A world where being poor is not a slow motion death sentence. A world where everyone is in a position to build some savings instead of living paycheck to paycheck. A world of internet connectivity as a human right, including in the most rural area. A world of net neutrality. A world of limited copyrights and limited patents. A world void of monopolies as a matter of principle. A world of personal bodily autonomy. A world where privacy is protected for most people but where the superrich have transparency requirements because they can greatly affect our wellbeing with a stroke of a pen. A world with a wealth ceiling and no billionaires."
All good ideas. And all impossible to achieve through cooperation with fascists.
Not only do they by definition argue in bad faith. They’re also ideologically opposed to ALL of it.
There are people who don’t see “beat the other guy no matter what” as the aim of our great political project.
If the neofascist movement captures America the ‘great political project’ will be over. End of story.
You understand the other guy will invariably KILL that project? If you really care about it, beating him at all costs is what you should be doing
If that was the aim, it wouldn’t be a “two” party system. That is clearly not the current purpose of the US government.
The man has continuously been given visibility and a platform for the past 4 years to whine and carry on about a stolen election that wasn’t and the failings of America that aren’t. Ask yourself, was the same thing done for Obama? Bush? Clinton? Bush Sr.? Certainly not… What about Romney? Perot? McCain? Hillary? Gore? Dole? Why not?
Why is this fellonious, mutant Cheeto still being given a voice and opportunity to continue to influence American history? Whether it’s for ratings or for some ulterior agenda, we’ll probably never know. Shame on all of them, either way. I’m sure it all comes down to money, but whatever it is, it’s disgusting…
They treated Trump as a real candidate back in 2016, artifically elevating him, all because Hillary thought it was an easy win… CNN is absolutely complacent
They chase ratings, not the bidding of political campaigns. They also reported on all of Hillary’s legal problems often ignoring the FBI decided not to prosecute her after millions in tax prayer money investigating her. And as many have pointed out, the FBI doesn’t want to let people go free after it spends years and millions of dollars investigating them.
CNN: “Biden’s too old! He’s unfit to be president.”
“What about the convicted felon and rapist? Isn’t he unfit?”
CNN: * crickets *
It’s a sad state of affairs when we’re deciding who to vote for based on who’s less unfit for the job rather than who is more qualified.
CNN has been drifting right for a while now, and with this debate it feels like they started to no longer pretend their bias.
Trump driving the world off a cliff brought alot of clicks and revenue for new agencies. Boring Biden doing the job like an adult cut into their money.
Just going to ask… Did you only recently start paying attention to the political news? Because since even before January 6th and CNN has certainly covered Trump in detail… His indictment, his convictions, the Jan 6 hearings, etc. Where have you been? Media tends to cover Trump so much in fact that people were yelling at them for the opposite problem: “Don’t give him so much attention!!”
It’s universally saturated that anyone with a modicum of sense knows Trump is a convicted felon, rapist, and unfit for office. I say again: NO. SHIT. While I completely sympathize with that frustration and that Biden despite his age issues is still clearly preferable, there exists several problems with this rampant whataboutism:
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- The electorate, especially the battleground state undecided voters are simply not that informed and subject to go with whichever media stream of information takes them. Right now they are
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- It just so happens that the right-wing propaganda machine has a stranglehold on this country, almost always controlling the narrative and thus feeding this both sides rhetoric to aforementioned swing-voters.
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- When you can’t change the electorate, sometimes you must change yourself and play to the electorate you have. We can call for Hitler to step down all we want, but of course, Hitler won’t step down. What we do expect is the person holding the moral high ground to do the right thing, however, to give us a better shot.
This entire debate about whether Biden stays or goes is contingent solely on (a) energizing the Democratic grassroots coalition — who is not very energized right now, compared to say Obama or Sanders, and (b) appealing to the concerns of the battleground swing-voters, for whom Biden’s age is a deal-breaker.
This is one specific event with one specific scope. Both candidates performed poorly at that event. Only one of them has been in headline after headline. Yes, we all know Trump lies, but not covering his debate lies at least as much as covering Biden’s poor showing at the debate. Lies I remind you. One candidate participated in earnest if poorly. The other lied roughly once per speaking minute. As a candidate for President. That should be nonstop news, at least as much so as “Oh yeah, turns out Biden is old, too!”
All due respect but I think this frames the debate in the wrong context:
- Trump performed as expected, and remains the same if not better in the polls.
- Biden performed FAR worse than expected, and not only had a poor debate performance, he confirmed to 50 million people what was already shown to be on their minds, an immutable vice called not just age but senility.
This notion that, “If we just cover One More Scandal, we’ll get him this time!” to me is the definition of insanity.
So the real question we must all ask ourselves is this: How do you convince the low-info apathetic battleground swing-state voters who hate both candidates and will decide this election? So far, Biden has only lost them as his Presidency has gone on, and to me, that debate sealed the deal.
Biden is boring and poor for ratings. Biden has dementia!? That’s ratings!
Trump: (Ratings intensify)
Literally every day from 2016 to 2020 there was a new scandal. Some new horrible thing he said. It was never ending. Then there was January 6th and it was finally quiet. Quiet for nearly two years…
RNC: if you announce your candidacy, we won’t pay your legal bills.
DOJ: About those classified documents…
Trump: I’m running for president!
RNC: …
Trump: RNC needs new leadership, here’s my daughter in law. Also all funding goes to me first.
RNC: Trump is your God Emperor!
…
Supreme Court: Trump is your God Emperor!
Project 2024: Trump is your God Emperor!
Project 2024: Submit and there won’t be bloodshed!
CNN: Yes!!!
MSNBC: Yes!!!
The real issue is that today’s Republican party is not based on facts at all, it’s based on a collective hallucination, wishful thinking, alternative facts, which Republicans believe instead of actual facts.
The vast majority of the lies Trump spewed during the debate are things that Republicans believe are true. When each side has their own facts, the simple act of fact checking becomes a partisan exercise. And holding their candidate to account equals a partisan witch hunt.
This forces each media outlet to choose a side. If they want any attention at all from the Right, they have to lie like them. Outlets that stick to objective facts will be immediately dismissed by half the electorate. While we’d like to think most outlets worth following will choose actual facts, alternative facts increase your base and may lead to more profits.
While we’d like to think most outlets worth following will choose actual facts, alternative facts increase your base and may lead to more profits.
Capitalism is agnostic on facts. It is profit and wealth accumulation driven.
A lot of people were assuming that no fake product would ever be in demand, and thus profit seeking was at least aligned to reality. Greed is good they said.
Ha!
